Mine Crypto by Eating Your Way into the Blockchain

Ahh the blockchain, the fairytail place where Shrek squanders Lord Farquaad's deed with an immutable smart contract.

ME LORD IT'S WRITTEN IN BLOCK 3764 OF THE ETHEREUM BLOCKCHAIN!

Yeah we hear you buddy. The blockchain has become somewhat like the cloud in 2013, you're hearing about it, but what is it? And what does it mean?

What is the blockchain

A blockchain is a kind of distributed ledger technology, which is a decentralised way to store data. Different to banks, which store and control our data and transactions from one place, blockchains have our data stored across thousands of computers.

Since everyone has the same copy of the data, it creates a new level of security and trust without the need for middle men. If you're wanting to learn more, check out our crypto 101 post. But whether you understand what a blockchain is or not, we've made it more user friendly - all you do is use our existing app, eat delicious food, and earn crypto.

200K+ Aussies are mining cryptocurrency by eating out

Liven's app rewards people for eating out in a cryptocurrency called LivenCoin. Right now, you can earn 10-30% of your bill at over 1,000 merchants across Melbourne and Sydney (soon to be several thousand across the globe!). Your LivenCoin can be directly donated as you receive it, or you can have it sit in your Liven wallet for you to spend next time or trade with others.

You can make your way into the blockchain by eating burgers, drinking matcha, or even treating yourself to a dolci and the best part is, you don't have to learn something new. For new and old Liven users alike, the app experience doesn't change using Liven to discover yummy restaurants, pay instantly with one tapp, earn food money, and repeat.

Why is Liven using a cryptocurrency?

Liven is a mobile payment-rewards platform which started up in 2014. Up until now, we've used a digital currency pegged to the Australian dollar called Liven Cash - which has served Liven and its users well.

However, we've got big plans, and traditional digital currencies just won't take us where we want to go; namely, we've got big expansion plans and a cryptocurrency allows us to leap over a lot of the technical and financial hoops you find in traditional infrastructure.

You can read the details of why we chose blockchain and cryptocurrency here but put simply, cryptocurrency allows our platform to cater to a global audience much easier than traditional currency. Aside from that, a core part of our app, the donation feature, is enabled further with blockchain. Traditionally when we donate to charities, it's quite difficult to know exactly where the money goes and how it's used. The transparency afforded by a distributed ledger will allow users to donate directly to organisations and their specific initiatives, which is pretty exciting.

Along with blockchain technology serving Liven and it's users, we believe Liven also serves the blockchain - the potential implications of decentralised technologies are huge, and by bringing blockchain and cryptocurrency to everyday people in an app your grandma could use, we're taking steps to solve something known as the utopian problem with cryptocurrencies - read about that here, if you'd like.